By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, The British Library

This blog post gives an overview of our sports related activities for the year to celebrate Sporting Heritage Day 2022 

2022 has been, and continues to be, a really busy year for international sport especially in the UK. The Winter Olympics in Beijing and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham were  always scheduled to take place in 2022 years in advance. But as the Covid-19 pandemic caused disruption to many events in 2020 and 2021 many sporting events were postponed. The UEFA Women's Euros and the Rugby League World Cup, both hosted by England, were moved from 2021 to 2022, meaning that 2022 was even busier than normal in terms of major sporting events.

Sports has always been an Important part of the UK Web Archive so 2022 has been a busy year for us so far. Since 2017, sports has been grouped into three separate collections. 

Sports Collection - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/1768 

Sports: Football - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/1490 

Sports: International Events - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2315 

The UK Web Archive regularly publishes blog posts about sport, which can be found here: https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/sports/

2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics

As members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) both the British Library and the National Library of Scotland contributed to the IIPC Content Development Group (CDG) 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics collection.

The Olympics took place in Beijing from 4 to 20 February 2022, while the Paralympics were also in Beijing from 4 to 13 March 2022. 

The collection archived 863 items which included whole websites, subsections or individual pages from websites. These items are from 38 countries and 24 different languages are represented in the collection. Topics covered both events on and off the sporting field.

Browse the collection here:

https://archive-it.org/collections/18422 

UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022

The UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition took place across England from July 6 to July 31, 2022. Although the event is over we are still collecting websites about the Euros from around the UK till the end of October. 

This collection covers both the sporting and cultural achievements of the event. There are over 275 items in the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection.

So far we have published seven blog posts about the Women’s Euros and there are still more to come. They can be found on the UK Web Archive blog with the sports tag here:

https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/sports/ 

Browse the collection here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4278

Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022

Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 ran from 28 July to 8 August. Although the sporting events are over the cultural programme is continuing for a number of weeks. This means that UKWA still has an open call for nominations for this collection.

The collection covers both the sporting and cultural achievements as well as the social impact of this mega event. So far there are 434 items in the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 collection.

Browse the collection here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4228 

Rugby League World Cup 2021

The Rugby League World Cup 2021 will take place from 15 October to 19 November 2022 across England. 

This event is unique in that the men's, women's and wheelchair competition all take place alongside each other. You can nominate your UK published Rugby League World Cup content here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate 

Updates on this collection will be published on the UK Web Archive blog and Twitter account. 

When published this collection will sit as a subsection of the Sports: International Events collection on the UKWA Topics & Themes page and will be available here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2315 

Access to the collections 

All of the archived content in the IIPC CDG 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics collection is open access. CDG collaborative collections are archived using the Archive-It platform meaning that all archived content is open access, although a publisher may  request its removal under the Internet Archives’ general terms and conditions

All CDG collections can be viewed here: https://archive-it.org/home/IIPC 

UK Web Archive Content has a mix of on-site and remote access due to the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations implemented in 2013. The full manifest of  content selected for UK Web Archive collections is visible on the website but access to individual archived websites depends on permission being granted by website publishers.  A note under each title informs users whether they can view the archived website online or whether they need to visit a UK Legal Deposit Library to view the archived content. 

All curated collections can be found on the Topics and Themes page of the UK Web Archive website: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/category 

Get involved

The UK Web Archive is a partnership of the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and works with other external partners in order to expand  our subject expertise. We can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, however - we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to sports is preserved for future generations.

Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate 

By Andy Jackson, Web Archive Technical Lead, British Library

In 2020, we led a project funded by the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) called Asking questions with web archives – introductory notebooks for historians, developing a set of Jupyter notebooks to introduce researchers to the potential and possibilities of web archives. In collaboration with the National Library of Australia and National Library of New Zealand, this funding enabled Tim Sherratt to create the Web Archives section of the GLAM Workbench.

We were very happy with how this project worked out, and we think collaborating with someone like Tim opens up new ways of supporting researchers working with web archives. If you’d like to know more about the results of the project, check out Tim’s 2020 blog post and his conference presentation from 2021.

While the investment in project funding got the ball rolling, the GLAM Workbench needs ongoing management and maintenance to keep it running.  This should not be taken for granted, so we’re proud to announce that the Web Archives section of the GLAM Workbench is now supported by the British Library.

We hope this will help ensure this critical resource remains available in the future, and we would like to encourage other web archives to look at whether they could pursue project or supporting funding to help maintain and grow the GLAM Workbench.

By Jason Webber, Web Archive Engagement Manager, British Library

Domestic cats have featured in human life for thousands of years. They can make an incredible impact on many of our lives and even if you don’t have one, you may have enjoyed watching, reading or listening about them online. Have you watched a ‘funny cat’ video, laughed at ‘Grumpy cat’ or simply enjoyed a colleague’s pet making an appearance in a work video call?

It seems appropriate , therefore, on International Cat day, to show a few things ‘cat’ that we have in the archive.

Larry the No.10 Cat - Political scrapbook

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170708173602/https://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/02/larry-the-downing-street-lolcat/

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20110117154300/http://www.battersea.org.uk/cats/new_cats_gallery/index.html

WW1 cats - Durham at War website

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170702092930/http://ww1countydurham.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/wwi-cats-on-internet.html

Cat Behaviour - Cat Protection website

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170215160335/http://www.cats.org.uk/cat-care/cat-behaviour-hub

Teapots, Teapots, Teapots - Cheshire Cats

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20141030023644/http://teapotsteapotsteapots.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/cheshire-cat-teapot.html

Pi-powered cat feeder

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20141021035626/http://www.raspberrypi.org/pi-powered-cat-feeder/

If you haven't had enough cat chat, take a look at our 2020 blog - Cats v Dogs on the archived web.

Fan of dogs, their day is on the 26th August.

By Georgina Bentley, Service Manager Community-based Customer & Cultural Services at Wigan Council

Introduction

The Heritage Fund awarded £500,000 to a programme which is recording the hidden history of women’s football and launched a celebration of the game, its players, and communities in partnership with the UEFA Women’s EUROs.

Alongside this programme, the UK Web Archive is also archiving UK-published websites about the tournament. In this guest blog post, we hear from Georgina Bentley from Wigan Council about their contribution to the collection.

Wigan Council

Wigan Council is the local authority for the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in the North West of England. The Council have been one of the 10 host cities for the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, hosting 4 matches at the Leigh Sports Village.

What did you collect for your museum/archive while working on this project?

From the start we wanted to ensure the stories of our local pioneers were central to our collection approach. Supported brilliantly by our archive volunteers, we established a much deeper understanding of how the game had developed in the borough, whilst a call out for local women and girls to share their stories provided us with the source material from which our heritage projects developed.

We translated this material via a series of creative heritage programmes including temporary exhibitions, contemporary collecting events at the fan parties and projects such as A Place At The Table and Around The Match.

The programme has already increased our existing collection with more coming forward. The material collected to date includes a range of oral histories, memorabilia, photographs, news articles, programmes, alongside the output of the creative heritage projects such as the new kit, pin badge and programme developed for the Around The Match.

What kind of online content did you select for the UK Web Archive collection?

With our content selection we wanted to try and capture the breadth of the heritage programme in the borough as it has been an incredibly rich experience to celebrate the amazing stories of our women and girls that play and love the game. This includes:

• Event pages from cultural sites.
• Project websites
• Online newspapers

What websites are important for telling the story of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in your area?

The Visit Wigan web page encapsulate the breadth of opportunity the tournament afforded locally to celebrate elite women’s sport and be inspired to participate.

The Around The Match web page tell the story of 11 women and girls brought together to form a new team. Their individual passions and stories beautifully expressed in a wonderful film on the site that also has details of the contemporary memorabilia created to mark the tournament in the borough. The memorabilia is currently for sale, with 100% of the proceeds going to support the grass roots game locally as a lasting legacy.

The A Place At The Table web page follows the history of women’s football both locally and in context to the national and international game. Each table from the project focuses on a point in history that highlights the place of women in football, as well the parallels with the development of rights for women and wider society at the time.

The archived versions of these web pages can be found in the Cultural Programme subsection of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection on the UK Web Archive website.

Get Involved

Browse through the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 and let us know if there is any UK published content that should be added to the collection. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nominations form: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

 

By Dr Justine Reilly, Strategic Director, Sporting Heritage

Introduction
The Heritage Fund awarded £500,000 to a programme which is recording the hidden history of women’s football and has launched a celebration of the game, its players, and communities in partnership with the UEFA Women’s EUROs.

Alongside this programme, the UK Web Archive is archiving UK-published websites about the tournament. In this guest blog post, we hear from Dr Justine Reilly from Sporting Heritage who supported host city Sheffield, with their contribution to the collection.

Sporting Heritage
Sporting Heritage is a UK wide organisation who work to support the preservation, collection, access, celebration of the sporting past. Whether that be objects and archives, photographs and videos, oral histories or song and chants, our role is to support all those who have a sporting story. We deliver a range of activities and events for example training events, National Sporting Heritage Day, and the Sporting Heritage Awards.

What did you collect for your museum/archive while working on this project?
We supported the host city of Sheffield by developing a number of different programmes including:

• An online exhibition to highlight some key individuals that have been instrumental in the story of women’s football in Sheffield
• A webinar highlighting the current and future development of women’s football in Sheffield. (Delivered on the 21^st July and to be uploaded to our YouTube channel this month)
• Worked with Sheffield Museums and Galleries and delivered workshops for children as well as families during the school holidays
• Podcasts and In Conversations highlighting important women’s football heritage linked to Sheffield and nationally

How did you collect your archive material?
We reached out to local sports clubs and organisations with links to football across Sheffield to inform both our exhibition and our wider activity. This included a social media campaign to draw in voices which have previously been ignored and hidden in the story of women’s football in Sheffield.

We continue to capture new stories via our web pages, and worked closely with partner organisations such as Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD) and academic researchers Dr Fiona Skillen and Dr Gary James to inform our programming. Our aim was to draw on online content, cross reference historical facts, and hear from lived experience voices which may not have been part of the historical record previously. 

What websites are important for telling the story of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in your area?
The overarching web pages linking to our heritage content around the Women’s Euro in Sheffield:

https://www.sportingheritage.org.uk/content/category/what-we-do/projects/uefa-womens-euros-22

The linked pages hosted by the City of Sheffield:

https://www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/visit/uefa-women-s-euro-2022/

And FURD pages outlining their work on the physical exhibition plinths and supporting activity:

https://furd.org/news/hidden-history-of-sheffield-womens-football-revealed-in-new-exhibitions

The archived versions of these web pages can be found in the Cultural Programme subsection of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection on the UK Web Archive website.

Get Involved
Browse through the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection and let us know if there is any UK published content that should be added? Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, The British Library

Introduction
The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are taking place from July 28th to August 8th. There is also an extensive cultural programme running alongside the event till the end of September 2022.

The first Commonwealth Games was held in 1930 and the 2022 event is the twenty second edition of the competition. This is the sixth time that Britain has hosted the Commonwealth Games, Scotland have hosted it three times and including Birmingham 2022, England has hosted it three times. However, this is the second time that Britain has hosted this event since the formation of the UK Web Archive in 2005. 

Sport collecting in the web archive
In late 2017, the UK Web Archive started to formally curate sports websites by establishing three main collections on sport. They are the Sports Collection, Sports: Football and Sports: International Events. The final collection in this series is Sports: International Events, documents major sporting events mostly hosted in the UK. It is in this collection that the Commonwealth Games Glasgow 2014 and the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 collections sit.

You can view the Glasgow 2014 collection here:  https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/22 

You can view the Birmingham 2022 collection here: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4228

The Birmingham 2022 collection overview
We’ve broken this collection down into six areas:

• Competitors: Athletes' websites and social media collected during the Games
• Cultural Programme: Any websites and social media accounts related to the cultural programme during the Games
• Organisational Bodies/Venues: UK national Commonwealth Games bodies' sites, local government sites etc.
• Press Media and Comment: News and comment, including the Commonwealth games, interest groups and others
• Sponsors: UK Websites and news articles relating to some of the official sponsors of the Games
• Sports: The Sports subsection has twenty subsections, all governing body websites and club websites related to these sports and the Commonwealth Games will be tagged under their relevant sport

Get involved 
The UK Web Archive works across the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and with other external partners to try and bridge gaps in our subject expertise. But we can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 are preserved for future generations.

Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form.

By Rosita Murchan, Web Archivist, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)

Thanks to the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Association for the photo

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is the official archive of Northern Ireland and is situated in the historic Titanic Quarter in Belfast. PRONI was established by the Public Records Act (Northern Ireland) in 1923 which means in June next year we look forward to celebrating our centenary. PRONI has been collecting websites for over ten years, focusing on Government departments, local councils and websites deemed historically or culturally important to Northern Ireland. Over the years our collection has grown in both size and scope and we now capture one terabyte of data per year. PRONI does not have legal deposit status, so working with the UK Web Archive enables us to widen the scope of our collections, and ensure that other relevant content is captured.

PRONI has a rich history of celebrating women in sport having previously curated ‘A Level Playing field – Women in sport’ an exhibition from the archives held by PRONI. With images from the late nineteenth century onwards, this exhibition reminds us that women actually have a long history of participation in a wide range of sporting activities. PRONI also holds the papers of the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Association which includes official minutes and documents, as well as scrapbooks, programmes, newspaper clippings and other ephemera (PRONI Reference: D4633).

We are delighted to be working in partnership once again with the British Library and adding a Northern Irish perspective to their UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection.

The Northern Ireland team has defied the odds to book their place in this summer’s tournament, and PRONI’s collaboration with the British Library will enable us to capture web content documenting the progress of the players who are set to make history for Northern Ireland this summer.

We plan to select as much of the news and media coverage as we can, capturing the local views, hype and excitement of Northern Ireland’s historic qualification to the Euros as well as content from Northern Ireland women’s official home page within the IFA (NI Women's Football) detailing all fixtures, news, team profiles and updates throughout the tournament. We will also include social media content about the tournament, twitter feeds of organisations and team members, and general social media coverage of the competition.

In recent years, PRONI has developed a number of creative and digital engagement projects that put the public at the heart of archives, making archives more welcoming and inclusive. We plan to use our social media channels to put out a call for nominations for sites from PRONI followers but anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nominations form: www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate

By Eilidh MacGlone (National Library of Scotland) and Aled Betts (National Library of Wales) 

The UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition is taking place across England from July 6 to July 31, 2022. We are collecting websites about the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO from around the UK.

You can view the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection here:  

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4278 

Although Scotland and Wales didn’t qualify for this year's tournament, football fans in both countries will be getting involved in the celebrations. In this blog post we hear about what content the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales have added to the UK Web Archive collection. 

National Library of Scotland 
As Scotland supporters are aware, we won’t be competing in this year’s Euros (ah, the 95th minute!). Yet, our collecting has captured a valiant qualifying effort, through news sites and the national team's social media. Caroline Weir is one player keeping an eye on the competition, writing an online column with some collegiate support for old Man City teammates. Also evident is that the writing we are collecting describes a sport reaching larger audiences.

Teams are competing in national stadiums – a departure from the smaller arenas we found collecting the last Women’s World Cup. It can be seen in the team taking advantage of this to share a broad message with more football fans. Captain Rachel Corsie giving an example, of wearing pride colours on her captain’s armband at Scotland’s game with Hungary. The national team are now looking to plans for its second World Cup next year, players are looking to a new Scottish Women's Premier League, starting in August. We will continue to preserve Scottish women's football, preserving growing interest in the sport.

National Library of Wales 
Wales were agonisingly close on qualifying for UEFA Women's Euro England 2022, which would have been a historic moment as would have meant Wales reaching their first ever major Tournament. Northern Ireland narrowly secured the play-off place at the expense of Wales as their head-to-head away goal count was superior! As the Euros are being held in England, National Library of Wales focus will be archiving sites looking at the competition from a Welsh perspective.

Women’s Football in Wales has never been stronger as the National team maintain their push for qualification for next year’s World Cup and the huge rise in domestic clubs over the last 20 years providing opportunities to so many. This is reflected by the many websites and twitter feeds that have been archived by the National Library of Wales. For instance, we archive the FAW website and Twitter account, the Twitter feeds of our most famous players, archive Premier clubs websites as well as delving into grassroots football by archiving Domestic League websites and we will look at adding many more sites to the rich collection that we already have.

Get involved with preserving women’s football online with the UK Web Archive
The UK Web Archive works across the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and with other external partners to try and bridge gaps in our subject expertise. But we can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 are preserved for future generations. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form.